Why Scripture translations differ

by Michael Shackleton · November 3, 2016

The second book of Maccabees 12:42-45 is often quoted in support of the Catholic belief that earthly prayer can contribute to releasing the dead from their sins. Protestants do not accept the books of Maccabees as part of their Bible and therefore cannot believe how our prayers can help release the dead from Purgatory. Why do their translations of the Bible include Maccabees and ours do not? -W Vincent

The reason goes way back to the 6th century BC when King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and deported its leaders and inhabitants to Babylon. By the time the Jews eventually returned home, many of them had strayed to other lands. This was the beginning of the dispersion of the Jews, also known as the diaspora.

Living abroad, these dispersed Jews could no longer attend worship in Jerusalem’s temple where Hebrew was the liturgical language. They flocked to Sabbath services in local synagogues instead. Surrounded by Greek-speaking people, they became Greek-speaking, and lost the use of the sacred language of their homeland as well as the ethos of the Holy City.

To serve their needs, the scriptural texts were translated into Greek with rabbinic approval and so the new Greek Bible was developed, known as the Septuagint. This became widespread and it was the Bible that St Paul used when he went on his missionary journeys around the Roman Empire, where Greek was still largely the spoken language.

But tensions began to arise between the Hebrew-speaking Jews of Palestine and the Greek-speaking Jews of the dispersion. The Palestinians doubted that the Septuagint was the inspired word of God because, although most of it was a translation from Hebrew, some of its books were not written in Hebrew and on the sacred soil of the Holy Land. Also, it appears that devout Jews could not agree with Christians making use of their Greek Bible.

After intense rabbinical study, the Hebrew Bible was accorded official approval by the Jewish authorities, omitting the books in the Septuagint of Greek authorship, such as Maccabees and certain other texts.

The Protestant Reformers, probably because Catholics still accepted the Septuagint, adopted the Hebrew Bible, and that is why their versions generally omit Maccabees and the other texts. Some Protestant-approved Bibles include them under the name of apocryphal writings, meaning that Protestants admit them as having the capacity to edify the reader but not to impart any doctrine. Updated from 2011